The range and diversity of entertainment available to working people during the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is explored with the emphasis
deliberately away from London. Four broad case studies are presented: music
hail, theatre, portable theatre and the public house. The influence and personality
of the caterer was crucial in the evolution and operation of small, public house
halls in Ilkeston Derbyshire. These are compared with the Sebright, a suburban
pub music hall in Hackney, east London. Theatre is examined in terms of the
popularity of sensation plays during the 1880s and 1890s, with a detailed
analysis of particularly popular examples, and a discussion of the touring
company and its operation in the provinces. Portable theatres are examined as
businesses, including the composition of companies and the audience understood
them. Finally, the provincial public house is explored as the focus of leisure
activity. The range and variety of these activities is examined in terms of the
provision of leisure space, performance ethos, and the oral narrative of the pub
story. Drawing these four areas together, I show that the provincial experience of
popular entertainment claimed only partial independence from the London
model, and that "provincial" as a cultural descriptor is difficult to define. Where
the pub music hall in Ilkeston and Hackney had the common driving force of
dynamic caterers, the "products" themselves differed markedly. In contrast, the
"provincial theatre," whilst it laboured under that often pejorative designation,
offered a dramatic diet identical in many ways to the popular working class
theatres of London. Nevertheless, the portable theatre and the public house are
discussed entirely in their provincial contexts, showing that there are aspects of
popular entertainment which had quite specific, provincial characteristics.